1814	LETTER TO TERRY	7
that negative circumstance than in his alliance with the
niece of King Gorbodue.
To talk upon a blither subject, I wish you saw Abbots-
ford, which begins this season to look the whimsical, gay,
odd cabin, that we had chalked out. I have been obliged
to relinquish Stark's plan, which was greatly too expen-
sive. So I have made the old farmhouse my corps de
logiS) with some outlying places for kitchen, laundry,
and two spare bedrooms, which run along the east wall
of the farm-court, not without some picturesque effect.
A perforated cross, the spoils of the old kirk of Gala-
shiels, decorates an advanced door, and looks very well.
This little sly bit of sacrilege has given our spare rooms
the name of the chapel. I earnestly invite you to a pew
there, which you will find as commodious for the purpose
of a nap as you have ever experienced when, under the
guidance of old Mrs. Smollett, you were led to St.
George's, Edinburgh.
I have been recommending to John Kemble (I dare say
without any chance of success) to peruse a MS. Tragedy
of Maturin's author of Montorio: it is one of those
things which will either succeed greatly or be damned
gloriously, for its merits are marked, deep, and striking,
and its faults of a nature obnoxious to ridicule. He had
our old friend Satan (none of your sneaking St. John
Street devils, but the arch-fiend himself) brought on the
stage bodily. I believe I have exorcised the foul fiend
— for, though in reading he was a most terrible fellow,
I feared for his reception in public. The last act is ill
contrived. He piddles (so to speak) through a cullender,
and divides the whole horrors of the catastrophe (though
God wot there are enough of them) into a kind of drip-
pity-droppity of four or five scenes, instead of inundating
the audience with them at once in the finale, with a grand
"gardez Veau" With all this, which I should say had
I written the thing myself, it is grand and powerful; the
language most animated and poetical; and the characters